


Not a Cure for This

by exAm



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, Bisexuality, Character Death, Dark, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fem!Kira is as evil as Kira was, L protects his family, Misa is a cheerleader, Multi, Murder, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Questionable Parenting Skills, Spoilers, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-26 15:30:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12061857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exAm/pseuds/exAm
Summary: The hundred thousandth and one Kira-wins fic but with fem!Kira, threesomes, questionable child rearing, eventual AU SPK pursuit and world-ruling antics.Summary: Light Yagami was an actress whom L would have had almost any iteration of put to death for her many crimes against humanity. Or so he had told himself until she was with child.Pairings: explicit L/Fem!Light, nonexplicit L/Misa, explicit L/Fem!Light/Misa, (anticipate in future chapters) Mello/Matt (jealous Near), Mikami/Fem!Light (one-sided), Takada/Fem!Light





	1. Thirty-six Past Feelings

**“In the time it takes to break it//She can make up ten excuses” - Girl Anachronism, Dresden Dolls**  
  
"I know what kind of girl you really are. Don't I." Spike to Buffy in BtVS

Not A Cure For This  
  
“You will not be handcuffing my eldest daughter to you Ryuzaki. She is a young girl and you are a full grown man. I’m her father and I forbid it.”  
  
“I will leave her in that drab cell until every doubt she is the first Kira has been scrubbed from my mind. Which may be never.” He pauses. “I am not joking it could be a very long time indeed, Yagami-san.”  
  
Soichiro Yagami shook his head angrily, then sunk his forehead into his hands, defeated. “There must be cameras on you both at all times. I need to know you will respect her space, her privacy, her…”  
  
“I promise not to touch your daughter in any way. I will treat her respectfully.” Except for putting her to death himself if she was Kira. A murderous deviant who was too pretty for her own good with long brown-red hair. Kira who had killed his friend Naomi and her husband Raye. Who had killed his protege B in rehabilitation before he was even midway through the expensive program L had paid for. He’d _destroy_ her. She would not be shown mercy because she had given none to others.  
  
“I'd watch the two of them on these cameras at all times!” Touta Matsuda exclaimed earnestly, making everything which was already uncomfortable so very inappropriate as well.  
  
"I believe Mogi-san and Aizawa-san are better suited for that task and you should focus on the important paperwork because that's what we hired you for." Soichiro wisely assigned.  
  
That’s what he’d promised her old man and it had appeased the police chief.

It was too bad L was a habitual liar.  
  
Even so, which was the one of them who needed protection from the other was less clear to him lately.  
  
Tonight again he looped footage of them sleeping in separate beds. He knees her legs apart like he’s taking her by force which she plays along with briefly. Crying out and struggling against his arms. But she wants him, Kira wants him, she pants with her need for him, or it’s a very convincing pantomime of need. Either way, he is doomed. He is taking a deep dive into it, not coming back up for air.  
  
The first time she had come on to him, it had been hypnotizing, like responding to a siren’s call. After they’d resolved the Yotsuba case she seemed deeply changed somehow but it was an unidentifiable difference. She looked the same, spoke the same, but she felt different to him so he hadn't freed her from the cuffs immediately. Her purity had been visibly singed around its edges. That night at 3 am he heard the chain jangling and woke to her in his twin bed to find her cuddled into him, she wriggled her tight backside against his morning wood and sighed cutely.  
  
Then as if in a dream, he dug his right hand into her white panties to find them soaked. She looked back at him invitingly. He hallucinated then (or he actually saw) her eyes flash dark red. He knew better than to fall for this, but he felt to see her shine like this for him, even for a moment, when her mind was a flint that sharpened his own, it was worth the fall; so he kissed her. He thought then that he was done for. That they both were because whatever this thing was between them, the hunter and the hunted - it was far heavier than either of them could carry. He wanted to quicken their collapse underneath.  
  
He ate her out for hours. He wanted almost nothing in return. He didn't think he could handle it from his brave siren. Hearing her moan out for more was prettier than any music he’d ever heard. She invoked God loudly and he silently invoked her name, Kira.  
  
The next night, he was more prepared, he pulled out a condom but to his surprise she took it out of his hand. She winked at him and shook her head silently no. He'd felt that meant no intercourse until she sank onto his bare cock. He knew her routines. Knew she took no medicine. Instead of trepidation there was an immediacy then that he felt fester, spread then grow inside him until it started to consume him with a lust bordering on madness. L felt like an animal in heat when pinning her down. He didn't offer to use protection again.  
  
Daily he consulted with her for her opinion during their work on the sham the Kira case had become. A week later, when she was finally unchained from him because it was difficult to justify her extended custody  anymore to the Kira Task Force - she still she stayed mostly at his side which made him comfortable. Had she been too often out of eye shot he would have been preparing for a death clutching at his chest. His task, after all, might have already been served.   
  
They were lying all the time now, they were both lying to everyone and they were building on each other's lies while keeping the appropriate studied distance between them. Even while L knew their mixed orgasm was dribbling down Light’s white inner thighs. He wondered sometimes if the other men could smell it on her. If they'd ever suspect how warmly and erotically she’d accepted him throughout each night. If they had ever called her college dorm and realized she was never going home to it, that her roommate there didn't even know who she was.  
  
How hidden really was his spiraling weakness, his growing madness for this vixen of a young woman? Did his eyes linger too long on her fresh long limbs, did he stare into her amber eyes as if worshipping her the way he did now during every night? Did the others smell her vibrant sex on his breath?  
  
Beautiful resilient Light. She never looked the least bit tired or acted the least bit untoward. She was an unimpeachable professional. So she left at the same time as all of the rest of the task force then came back an hour later with a bushel of apples in offering and a bottle of white wine to relax them both.

This was all he could ever need and he was selling what little was left of his soul for it. He was no longer seeking retribution for fallen comrades and protecting the many whose well-being he was entirely responsible for, he was seeking her soft perfect fit legs locked around his back and her heels settled into the small of his back. He was giving up control only for her hard nails cutting into him while she orgasmed.  
  
The choice on her side would seem a rash, illogical one but it was aimed at entrapment. It put her probability of being Kira at one hundred percent. L wouldn't dare tell anyone how he’d reached his conclusion. So instead he huffed the sent of her hair enchanted by the splendor of this, his two-faced murderess, an anathema consumed slowly enough that he was only vaguely aware of his former self dying. He could exchange his moral fortitude for her childish ideals as long as he could numb himself in her feverish embrace.  
  
She’s bought his future silence at a great social expense to herself, after all. He’d more than accepted the payment.  
  
When her period stopped coming and they both know deep down that will no longer do anything that might cause her death, rather he will kill for her and with her. Destroying Kira now would feel like slitting his own throat. He whispers to her, crying at the power she’d gained with her simple gambit, “You’ve won.”  
  
He isn’t shocked at all when she starts stroking his hair with a big, bright smile and a soft laugh, and though she couldn't have really known this would work she orders him, “I know. We’ll work from England. Your money is there from what I understand.”  
  
He wondered if Soichiro choked on his own sobbing when they disappeared together. If Matsuda did. Neither had long for the pain of his unexpected betrayal though and what they might have wrongly concluded was his kidnapping of her and Misa, they'd not even had the time to report it because they'd been waiting hoping they were wrong, hoping the three of them had gone out for a day as friends without thinking ahead to announce it. Watari must have known it was the end. L had received an email from the man the day he disappeared. He hadn't opened it yet; he'd thought he'd wait until the storm inside of him died. It turned out that volatility had a Jupiter like permanence.  
  
In London they hold hands in his Rolls-Royce Phantom Sedan while the driver navigates cobble-stone streets, Light is thumbing through her smart phone with her other hand. Misa Amane had sent her pictures of their new shared townhouse and she'd gotten the dining room done up in a gothic palette while L and Light spent the weekend at an academic conference for the sake of maintaining their false identities, “It’s too much. Did you give Misa a better credit card, L?” but before he can say that of course he had, that she was their equal partner in this, too, the relevant news over the radio interrupts Light's growing annoyance at their nice new Oxford University adjacent home looking increasingly like it's suitable for gothic-romantic vampires. Both of them silently listen to the grave announcer.  
  
“This is an emergency broadcast. In Japan all members on the secret private task force assigned to the Kira case have been confirmed dead since three weeks ago. Though not all bodies have been recovered it appears the at least 11 members drowned themselves in the Tokyo Bay. Though no sources can reliably confirm his identity, the Japanese national police force have confirmed that the rogue detective, known for challenging Kira, "L" was leading this team. The NPO will not confirm if he died with his fellow teammates. Several subjects under investigation for connection to Kira have also died including the 19 year old actress, Misa Amane. It is the recommendation of the UN and ICPO that no further units be created to investigate Kira. The BBC and its subsidiaries sponsor Kira's kingdom. Our CEO, Max Islay announced, "There is nothing to fear for the kind people of the world these days. So we should celebrate the elimination of all members of what we should consider to be a Japanese government-sanctioned terrorist organization. Praise Kira. God's will be done.”  
  
'No longer bothering to hedge their bets,' L thinks and twines his fingers elegantly with his Light's. Now that the threat of someone who also seemed godlike pursuing Kira had been snuffed out - all the news organization talking heads would be bowing and scraping to Kira.  
  
To believably erase themselves both from history and fake their own deaths, Light Yagami's and his work needed to be thorough with no sentimentality that could point back to them. Light hadn’t wanted to write her father’s name so L had grabbed the pen and done it for her.  
  
In turn, and as if in retribution, Light had written Aiber, Wedy and , then with some gravity, Watari’s name. Light surprisingly had held L tightly and stroked his back as he sobbed uncontrollably for his only chosen family. Light did not cry for her father though her lip trembled a bit, but her emotions were changing in a way that could not be blamed on her physical state.  
  
Three innocents of their same ethnicity, weight, height and age had also died on that day. L had completed the job. Light would have never gotten her hands dirty. L was more realistic about what it was they had become. The transition from detective to serial killer had been as easy as turning himself inside out.  
  
He used a trick he'd learned from Beyond Birthday, of removing the victim's fingerprints and filing down and making unidentifiable their dental work, he changed them like dolls into doppelgänger clothing, he coated their faces in lye before throwing them off a bridge into the Tokyo Bay. The chemical reaction sizzled in the water beneath him.  
  
All of them had families who'd be waiting for them that night.  
  
He watched the reaction continue for minutes, melting flesh off bone beyond his view.  
  
None of these young people had done any wrong except look the part. In the age of Kira though, many things were punishable by death.  
  
L was finding Light was more death god in nature than their two pet shinigami, Ryuk and Rem. The Japanese beauty rarely needed reassurances about the atrocities they were committing, now together, so that he started to get the sense she was losing her humanity to the death note. Then she'd smile at him warmly in the London rain while Misa prattled on in her heavily accented intermediate English about what they might name the child, how cute Light's kid would be and L would realize for the hundredth time that he didn't care at all as long as some vestige of humanity in Light Yagami was reserved just for him.  
  
No sacrifice was too great to Light for her New World and he understood that now. He wanted to protect her ideals, though he didn't truly share them. Stand back and allow her to preach her doctrine of peace by culling the cruel. He'd follow her anywhere and he'd protect her. She isn't God to him but she's the only thing he's ever cared in a way that set his heart on fire. He doesn't have much humility himself and the two of them together with Misa’s invaluable eyes have given humankind a God more real, more valuable than any prior God. One who, depending on how one thinks about it, protects all good people from harm in a way they can see and believe.  
  
Humanity will know peace - Light will force the evolution of their warlike species and L will stand back and let it happen because he loves her.  
  
That small voice at the back of his mind cries in panic that Kira's world _will_ be peaceful - dull and colorless. A humanity castrated of its violent impulses, a humanity with PTSD en masse. He quiets it. He thinks again on evolution. This will be different. Maybe not better, but different. And in the end, Light is all that matters.   
  
The announcer summarizes that the last known government sponsored force to stand against 'Kira' has committed mass suicide. One of the monstrous, strange death gods across from them starts cackling and L's meditation on his morals and Light's goals is thus ended. Ryuk guffaws,"A couple of ‘em don’t look dead to me.”  
  
On paper they _have_ died. If needed these new identities would die as well. There were 108 identities he had prepared for the three of them to slip into at any time but to stabilize into one new set was the best case scenario. Amane-san was an especially untalented liar, Light looked good in raincoats (she looked good in everything) and the weather in London best suited L's personality.    
  
He comforted his new wife, but he was probably only comforting himself; ghosting a kiss against Light’s neck while he rubbed her burgeoning stomach gently. He responded to Ryuk, “Kira saved us.”


	2. Thirty-six Present Feelings: Pt. 1

L/Misa (They aren't so different. He could serve as substitute if need be.)  
  
**"Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be hers." - Spike about Buffy, BtVS**  
  
"I'm falling like a loaded weapon in your arms" - Periscope

**Ch. 2 - Jumping back to leaving Tokyo**

L felt sorry for Misa. He knew Light put up with her because of her willingness to take on the shinigami eyes and play right into her hands.

When she had told him that they couldn't kill Misa Amane; he'd wrongly suspected she'd had some strong sentimentality for the girl. Once Misa's situation had been explained to him in more detail by Kira though his heart broke for the lovelorn woman who had multiple times halved her lifespan now to more properly serve her perceived savior. To Kira, Misa was only her eyes and her unshakeable loyalty. To Misa, Light Yagami was her princess knight.

They weren't so different. Misa and himself. For all he knew Light's interest in him was equally self-serving. Really she terrified him but he'd made his bed, he'd sleep in it.

They escape one by one by different routes from Tokyo and converge in London but Misa had been the first to arrive after L.

"Misa doesn't understand." She spoke perplexed in their brownstone hotel room in the city center, "Are we doing this because you knocked her up? That was irresponsible. My poor Light. Her figure will suffer for it."

"Misa we told you it was for the sake of the new world. You were listening to us in HQ before I sent you those cruise ship tickets, right?"

"It was a lot! A girl can only take so much you know!"

"Okay." He gathers her small hands in his large ones, to drive home how critical what he is saying is to their survival, "We're all here because we can't be who we were before. You are not Misa Amane anymore, not to anyone but Light and I. You are Yuki Ueguchi."

"Misa-Misa can do that! She loves acting and has tons of experience in commercials."

"Amane-san please don't use the cutesy third-person voice with me; I'm not a besotted follower. You use a distinctive ideolect - I mean to say that Misa is the only person who spoke like that in the whole world. So as Yuki you must learn to drop it if it's truly habitual."  
  
Misa who is dressed in cute vintage wear and suede booties, who has dyed her faux-blonde hair to a chocolatey brown and put it up into braids... probably genuinely believed that her need for acting as 'Yuki" had ended at wearing a different outfit and changing her hair color. She looked like she should be selling tea in a curio shop. It was a good look on her. But also a glimpse into her naive understanding of English fashion. She'd stand out regardless of the overly precious outfit though. In fact, if it weren't for Light, Misa would be the best looking woman he'd ever been in the same room with. They both drew too much attention. So both were going to need to perfect their acts. Not that he was worried for Light's ability.  
  
Misa had more than two brain cells to rub together, though. He'd confirmed that when she successfully tricked Higuchi into revealing he was acting as Kira by going off-script. So if he could make her a successful actress in one plot, perhaps a longer one really was possible, "Let me help you understand who I am in relation to yourself. Your girlfriend is pregnant by me. I intend to raise a family with her and I suppose yourself. We are all Kira. All of us. We are going to continue changing the world for the better." He says but without any of the grandstanding that Light has when she gives similar monologues about changing the world.  
  
"Yes. We will." She says, agreeing with a seriousness he doesn't typically see her exhibit.  
  
"So you and I are effectively also together. I hope to make Misa comfortable. How would she like to proceed?"

"I guess anyone who is good enough for Light-chan is good enough for me. Though," She pauses, "I still think you are a pervert, L Lawliet." He likes her a little more then. Using her shinigami eyes to remind him he no longer needs to hide his real name from her.

"Would you like to verify that suspicion? I'll be frank. You seem like a woman of exacting taste."

"Misa only loves Light. But Light slept with L. She even ran away with him and brought me here to be with you... so..."

"So?"

"L looks like a professor in this." She dissembled. An astute observation as he's hiding as one now after having submitted a history of stunning co-authored research he'd falsified and hacked into professional journals to upload in the frantic, sleepless, murder-ridden lead up to their exit. She reached for the sleeve of his tweed coat and briefly caressed his forearm over it, "You want to teach Misa all about whatever it is our Light-chan sees in you?" 

L's mouth went dry. He'd meant comfortable in other ways but there was no mistaking her meaning or the playful hint of seduction in her gentle brown eyes.  
  
They'd have two days until Light's boat got in. Light had given him free reign to be with Misa however he liked as if she'd seen this coming or suspected he'd not be able to contain himself in close proximity with the other woman. It had been a disturbing blessing. Kira only gave rites that made his stomach flip-flop. It seemed she had no sense of possessiveness with him at all except when they were in bed together.  
  
Misa and Light would never be able to see the same things in him, but he'd like it if Misa liked him - more than it being useful, it would be nice. He collected himself,  
  
"I can try."  
  
He leans down and kisses her cheek but she turns into it and meets his mouth. She tastes different than how he'd imagined. Less Cherry Chapstick and more like cacao and milk. For all her protesting, she consumes sweets in private.  
  
He likes that. He kisses her harder.  
  



	3. Thirty-six Present Feelings: Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's in a name, anyway?

**"I can see the destiny you sold - turned into a shining band of gold" - Wrapped Around Your Finger, The Police**

Chapter 3 (This is what his soul buys him. An audience with a Goddess.)

 

 

As her husband, L appreciates that one of Light's quirks is how much she is loathe to sleep in bed clothes when she doesn't have to. 

It means when she slinks into their California King on her side of the bed he is guaranteed access to every inch of her supple skin.

Misa lately joined them later and later in the evening. He waited for her unless Light moved for him to do otherwise because Misa hated to feel left out. It sets her to whining. That was to be avoided. He has a careful balancing act to perform keeping the two women at ease. Misa was no good to them if she felt neglected, she gets depressed because she's been regulated to live-in maid. Not because of a lack of potential. But because it's the most believable reason that another woman lives with them, here in their upper-class neighborhood. Of the three of them she is the most motherly, she can best soothe his son into a calm sleep and L trusts her more than Light to keep a watchful eye on the boy while he is lecturing or grading papers at Oxford. For an hour or so he has an arm around Light while she unironically reads, "The Master and Margarita."  
  
He closes his eyes and drifts into recollection. In his last year of college, at maybe 14 years old, he'd read the faustian work Light is reading a translation of in the original Russian, "Ну что ж, тот, кто любит, должен разделять участь того, кого он любит." He recited from it in the slovak tongue.  
  
Light doesn't respond except to slightly turn away. She was not a linguaphile like he is - even though she speaks three languages fluently, her native Japanese, the English she'd studied in school and the Chinese she'd elected to take briefly in college. Light's grammar and syntax were perfect and she had picked up the regional English dialect without much trying so that she and L could both sound like locals. He was still working with Misa on her conversational English but he'd been proud of her progress.  
  
Light must be in a good mood tonight because when Misa scoots onto the bed quietly as if she expects to go right to sleep; she mewls when Light extends her arms outwards for her to move into her embrace, a silent call but one they both recognize. It's something they both can occasionally look forward to from their enigmatic leader. 

L purrs in the back of his throat watching his lover and his wife sleepily french kiss. Prior to Light's quick-work seduction of him, he'd always felt too thin ('toned,' Misa obsequiously flattered him), near ghostly ('haunting,' Light would tease him) to pursue perfect women at the height of their conventional attractiveness, in the bloom of youth.  
  
But a year into their time as triad, he'd become confident that he could please them both whether apart or together. His greatest desire remained in distant, lovely Light but he'd wear either of them out whenever the opportunity arose. They'd left him feeling like a sexual powerhouse of a man, rather than the inexperienced awkward one he once was. Maybe he'd beed getting high on breathing their shared air. He suspected he wasn't the pinnacle of either of their desires but his stamina was good enough that he could be an appropriate vessel for their fantasies, he could be the approximation, the next to next best thing to the God of a man these women more rightfully deserved. L understood the yawning maw of need ever so much better since giving into Kira. Here, in their bed especially, he has abandoned all his higher reasoning for need. So when Light **needed**  him to be as rough as he could be with her or for him to be conversely, worshipfully submissive - he would give it. When Misa **needed** to be her natural submissive self, though open to just about anything, he knew being deliberate and slow with her left her breathless - he'd satiate it.  
  
Between them, there is a comfortable tangling of limbs; there is a repetitive and familiar way they fall into their union when they are too tired to be creative from their shared child-rearing and world building responsibilities. 

Misa who is petite beside either one of them serves as heated conduit to his and Light's never-ending duel for sexual dominance. 

Aside from frequent sex, Light does not give many things that would be expected of a partner inside of a normal relationship. Never once has she uttered an, "I love you," to Misa or himself. Though he'd often said it to her and he'd hoped, only once, maybe thoughtlessly, offhandedly, she'd echo it back and he might know that his life had not been spent on a person who viewed him as a total pawn. At times when she was gone on some mysterious outing Misa would look at him brightly and insist upliftingly, "I think she does love you, the way she looks at you. I wish she'd look at me like that." 

He still didn't know if that were true. The closest he'd gotten to confirming that Light returned his feelings was by meeting her open eyes sometimes when they'd kissed to find them dilated with her attraction to him.  
  
He'd prayed ever since then that the human body spoke in love languages if the mouth refused to speak honestly for pride.

He often didn't know where she was during the day. He'd given her an identity as a newly hired Oxford college librarian, a job he felt she could work while with child, but she'd negotiated with her work for less than part time. Open communication, emotional support and reciprocated efforts should not have been foreign concepts to socially astute Light Yagami but she was raised up above them as Kira and hardly pretended at emotional intimacy for her intimate partners. She took as much as he and Misa could give to her. In return she assigned the both of them ever more tasks to build and secure her kingdom so that when she revealed herself to the adoring worshipping hordes in a peace loving world, no real threat was left against Kira. 

\-----------------------

When she'd borne his first child he'd sat with her in the delivery room after and watched her smile at and hug their infant tightly. It had been an easy birth after a quick labor. Ryuk remarked that for someone shadowed by a god of death she seemed to have unusually good luck, but it was too bad the child didn't resemble Light. For that, L had shooed him out of the room to where Misa, unable to stomach the struggle and passing of bodily fluids during Light's labor, was passed out on a chair in the hallway. 

Rocking their blanketed child in the hospital bed she noted, seemingly filled with awe, "I was going to name him after my father but he looks too much like you for that."

"Dear." He enunciated, feeling pained. Even if the child hadn't been a deadringer for him - how would she have though they had any license to use that name after what they had done to her father, to Soichiro?

"Had you thought of one, then, a good name? I'm at a loss."

He had. He'd thought of the only name he could for their child who'd they'd known would be a boy for months now, but just in the case he'd resembled himself. At first it had made him uncomfortable that he'd felt compelled to use it. At times he'd remember one of his most irksome brilliant suspects, smiling up at him with a perfect made-up copy of his own face. In fact he'd never seen B's real face before the man had ruined it beyond all repair by setting himself on fire. Instead his doppelgänger's image still haunted him. How he had known L's face, well, even with torture they'd never gotten it out of the man. B'd been one of Kira's first 400 victims but she'd written so many thousands of names by now. He'd doubt she'd remember. "Rue Ryuzaki."

"That's an unusual name."

"It's an anagram of the Japanese pronunciation of L and his middle name should be my preferred psuedonym. Don't put the middle name on the birth certificate though. We can use it privately."

"You want to name our firstborn after an anagram of your pretentious old-English monogram?"

"L is not a floating letter on a TV screen. It is my real name."

"Fine. It can be that - a witty inversion. Whatever pleases you. A rose is a rose is a rose, my son is _my_ son." She kissed their infant's forehead and, "You hear that? I love you my Rue."  
\------------------------

She'd expressed a desire for another child with him soon after but he hadn't obliged her yet. Not because he didn't want to; it made him more than proud that she wanted his children. Even if he had a reason or three to believe her trying for a larger family with him was more about ensuring her legacy go on to a trustworthy and intelligent heir than it was about his desirability. But for his vanity's sake he would ignore this fairly solid conviction.

This year he'd found in the London police databases a file that suggested that Kira might be in the UK based on the recent killings. More importantly it suggested that whoever Kira was, they were wealthy. Which narrowed down the suspects to far for L's liking. If they had to move quickly again he didn't want her in a fragile state caring for their young son.

\--------------------------------------   
Three months later, he supposed it had dawned on her that the name Rue seemed more familiar than one L had made up on the spot.

"I looked up the name Rue Ryuzaki, L. What have you named our child, you unbelievable asshole!" She is enraged. He'd never heard her raise her voice to this volume before. Not even when he'd locked her up for being Kira and she was screaming that she was innocent. Beyond Birthday, or Rue Ryuzaki had been responsible for the Locked Room Killings that had plagued LA 12 years back. He'd been his most fascinating nemesis.

"No Light. I've named our child after the only person who'd ever bested me at the game I liked to play before I was yours. I was exceptional at this game, as you might recall. It's an auspicious name. The name of the man who beat the three best detectives in the world."

"The only person? I've bested you." Of course she is distracted by him saying, for the first time in front of her, though he'd thought it many times to himself, that she hadn't beat him. She'd won, but she wouldn't have if he hadn't found her irresistible. Only one person had ever legitimately beat him. 

"You did not beat me, Light. I joined you exactly because you failed to keep hiding your identity from me. It's an important difference." That hurt her, she practically recoiled as he said it.

"You are humiliating me! To name our child after one of these disgusting degenerates I've disposed of!" Yes and in the first 100 names no less. She gotten to all the famous serial killers first. His protege, the highest intellect on the planet in their time, gone in a blink because she'd seen his name and face and fancied herself fit to wipe him out.

"I am not trying to humiliate you or our son, dear." He hadn't been, really. Though he'd been probably trying to teach her a lesson. The potential for humiliation to their son was why hadn't had her write the proposed middle name on the birth certificate. It hadn't struck her as off because middle names were usually not used by Japanese people, anyhow. His son wouldn't need to know. It was more a reminder to himself, of the path he'd unwisely chosen but had no intention of going back on now, of the path they were forcing upon their son if he were to be Kira's heir. They were mass murdering under mild supernatural providence. There were no two ways about it.  
  
He'd been disappointed she hadn't figured it out and asked him so that he could elucidate his reasoning sooner. He'd thought it might interest her to know that Rue's namesake was once either smarter than he was or that he had been more resourceful. To this day, L still did not understand how he was able to do much of what he did to evade L when he was tracking him. The other detective, Naomi, had captured the man and he had failed to tell her it was because B was still human enough to have a crush, a weakness. Besides if B was a degenerate for murdering a handful of people (admittedly, in particularly inventive and horrific ways) what did that make Light who murdered people by writing their names as easily as if she were making a grocery list?   
  
"Light." He said putting his hands on her shoulders to feel her thrash forward to strike him across the face. He lets her hit fall, loudly, and watches her heave in her anger, he doesn't have the heart to mention it barely phases him, she has less than half his strength so pauses meaningfully, then tells her, "My son is _my_ son. The name stays."

Light didn't talk to him again all week, she kicked him out of their bed and forbade Misa from speaking to him as well. He slept beside Rue's crib in a large wooden rocking chair.  
  
"It's a good thing your mother loves one of us, Rue."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Russian here - 'Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.' That's about a dog sharing the fate of its tormented immortal master but it works here too.


End file.
